Monday, May 22, 2023

Two More Bikes Yet Nowhere to Paint

Gifted Univega 10-speedI received an old Univega ten-speed yesterday when I was doing laundry; I think it's from the early 80s but it can be difficult to look that sort of thing up sometimes…now that Google has polluted the Internet with mostly useless, pornograhpic, hate-filled, parasitically profiteering or delusional garbage.

It was super sweet of the girl, who told me used to ride the thing up the nightmare hill going to Lewis and Clark College. But, now I'm left with a conundrum: how in hell am I going to strip and paint all the frames I have? I just ordered a 1990 Trek Singletrack 950, which means once it arrives I'll have two complete bikes and SIX full framesets (one missing a headset), three of them desperately needing to be repainted and one of them probably benefitting from a complete repaint. I need to get these damn things painted and built, and either donated or sold, not just to make room in my storage unit but to give me something more productive to do than grit my teeth at my weirdo peers in the Friendly House or drinking crappy beers in public. I just spent a couple hours on Google Maps and on the phone looking for places I can rent for the purpose, but the cheapest workspace I could find that would let me do this costs $350/month (with a $525 deposit)—it just wouldn't be worth it. I'm just going to have to find a way to become situationally extroverted and civil enough to find someone willing to let me use a garage or whatever for the purpose.

I hate to say it, but alongside my inability to prepare and safely store food, this is another reason I refgret having lost my housing. I still don't miss the poverty pimps, the slumlords, and the shitty part of town and lame-ass neighbors, but I'm definitely having a hard finding ways to work around the lack of kitchen and workshop facilities.